


Anesthesia

by ElsaFH (Elsa0806)



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Childhood Friends, Imaginary Friends, Imaginary friends!AU, Kinda, Law Student Atsumu, M/M, Neurodivergent Atsumu, No Volleyball, slight angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-05
Updated: 2020-05-05
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:46:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24013813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elsa0806/pseuds/ElsaFH
Summary: Atsumu wakes up after surgery, the effects of the anesthesia just starting to wear off, only to find a boy standing in the corner of his hospital room.Sometimes, he just can’t believe the power of the human brain.
Relationships: Hinata Shouyou/Miya Atsumu
Comments: 16
Kudos: 107





	Anesthesia

**Author's Note:**

> Well, well, well. If it isn't me, finally posting a fic after catching up on the manga.
> 
> This might be part of a series? Maybe. I'm not sure. I do feel it needed to end the way it does, so I might post a second part or something in the future. We might never know :3c
> 
> As always, let me remind you that English is not my first language (I'm a native Spanish speaker), so, if you find any mistake, please don't hesitate in correcting me. It'll help me a lot to improve my writing!
> 
> This is, as you might already know, unbetaed. In this house, we die like men.
> 
> That's it from me for now! I hope you enjoy the fic ♥ With no further ado, see y'all in the end notes!

Atsumu was seven years old when his mom had to call an ambulance for him because he had a severe stomachache that turned out to be appendicitis. The surgery went well: no complications seemed to appear while the doctors cut him open and got that ticking bomb out of his body, and no issue showed its ugly head in the operating room once the doctors stitched him up. They sent him to a room to wait for the anesthesia to wear off, and that’s how his first big health problem ended. With him waking up, groggy and sore, in a white room, draped in uncomfortable sheets that seemed to perpetually smell like disinfectant and sterilization, with the constant beeping of the heart rate detector connected to him through electrodes, and a needle under the skin of the back of his hand, piercing the vein that looked too blue to his liking.

“Oh boy,” he whispered into the loneliness of his room. His free hand, the one that didn’t have the needle attached, flew to his forehead, trembling fingers pressing against his temples to rub soothing circles at it, trying to get rid of the incipient headache that throbbed behind his eyes. “My stomach doesn’t hurt anymore.”

He sighed, relieved. The mere memory of his mother’s pale face when he couldn’t move his legs while lying down on his back sent shivers down his spine. The pure fear in her features would probably follow him to the end of the Earth and until the day of his death.

He was okay now, though. He could feel the prickling of the stitches on the skin of his stomach, a few inches above his right hip. He didn’t even know how he could recognize such a feeling, having never felt it before, but a little bit of wriggling and a quick look to his abdomen confirmed his hunch: right there where he felt the prickling and the numb pain of a worrisome bruise was the red, sore, and swollen cut, covered with surgical thread in inconsistent patterns that made no sense to him.

“Whoa, cool!” he whooped, smiling from ear to ear. “I’ll have a rad scar now!”

“That’s a good one!”

With a _meep_ that didn’t sound as manly as he would’ve liked, Atsumu pulled his shirt down to cover his stomach, a blush covering his cheeks. The voice, high pitched and impressed, came from the corner of his room, the one that was closest to the door. His eyes fell on the small frame of a boy that looked his age, with vibrant orange hair and the biggest, most brilliant hazelnut eyes he’d ever seen. His skin was pale, almost ill-like, and his cheeks were hollow, the edge of his cheekbones pressing against the skin as if they were trying to cut through it. He seemed tired, like he’d been running non-stop for ages, and the wheezing of his breath seemed to whistle between the constant beeping of the heart rate detector.

“That’ll look pretty great in a few months!” he congratulated, giving him a thumbs up. Even when he looked so tired and ill, his energy was amazing. For some reason Atsumu couldn’t quite understand, the first idea that popped into his head when he smiled like that was _the sun_. The sun wasn’t supposed to look like it’d throw up at any given moment, though. “Appendicitis?”

“Huh?”

“Your surgery,” the boy elaborated, pointing towards his stomach with his index finger. The glint on his eyes screamed curiosity, and when he started jumping slightly up and down on his spot, Atsumu wondered how boring his life had to be to feel so excited about surgery, “you had an appendicitis surgery, right? Recently.”

“Ah… yeah. A few hours ago.”

“Ooooh, so you just woke up.”

“How’d you know?”

“Anesthesia takes a few hours to wear off.”

“How’d you know?”

“I just know.”

The boy didn’t seem to keep answering anything related to that, so Atsumu let it go. He fixed his stare on him, catching the exact moment when he moved from his spot to stand in front of the door, holding the handle to pull at it and peek outside through the gap between the wood and the frame. From his position, he couldn’t see his expression, but the tenseness of his thin shoulders gave away a nervousness that didn’t quite fit with his cheerful voice.

“You okay?”

“Ah, me?” he answered, giving him a look through the corner of his eyes.

“Duuh, yeah, you. Who else?”

“That’s not very nice of you!”

“You’re the one in my room, I don’t have to be nice!”

The boy closed the door, turning on his heels to look at him. Atsumu was ready to fight him if needed because _no one_ could be so dumb to enter someone else’s room and expect that someone to be nice to them. He was intruding and Atsumu was completely entitled to be rude.

“You’re right,” he said, blinking as if he’d just unveiled the deepest secrets of the universe. Like why adults tended to get angry when a child answered with real arguments, for example. “I haven’t even introduced myself.”

“What? No, that’s not what I m—”

“I’m Hinata Shouyou!” the boy introduced himself, ignoring him olympically. Atsumu closed his mouth, sighing in defeat: the other wouldn't listen to him, didn't matter how hard he tried. This kid, Shouyou, looked like that kind of child who wasn’t very self-aware. “I’m six years old!”

Atsumu could feel his headache starting to spread its fingers through his skull, the numb pain throbbing behind his eyes, pressing them until they were about to pop out of his skull. This kid couldn’t take a hint, could he?

It was better to just… go with the flow. Wasn’t that how children made friends? Going with the flow? His mom told him he should really make friends more often because he couldn’t depend on Osamu his whole life. He needed to meet people and create “bonds” on his own. Wasn’t this the perfect opportunity to do so?

“I’m…” he started, blinking in Hinata’s direction. He sighed, letting his body drop back against the pillows. “I’m Miya Atsumu.”

“Mhm,” Hinata left out, nodding. “I’m gonna call you ‘Tsumu.”

“What? No, wait—”

“How old are you, ‘Tsumu?”

_Go with the flow. Just go with the flow._

“Seven.”

“Oh, a year older!”

“Yes, I know maths.”

“Oh, do you?” he bubbled, blinking at him. He looked surprised. Why did he look surprised? Was it weird for a seven-year-old to know maths? Was he dumb? Hinata bit his lip, tilting his head to the side before taking a few strides towards Atsumu’s bed, his hands pressing on the mattress and his face very close to Atsumu’s. “Could you help me with my homework?”

“H-Homework? _What_?”

“Yes, homework,” he whispered, pressing his hand to the side of his mouth as if to cover his words so only Atsumu could hear him. Instinctively he leaned forward, his ear coming closer to the other’s lips, “we’re learning fractions and they’re _hard_. You think you could help me out with them?”

Atsumu considered it for a moment. He had no reason at all to help this stranger, no reason to waste his time on doing something so stupid like someone else’s homework. But the look on Hinata’s eyes, the glint of his irises, and the ear-to-ear smile plastered on his face seemed to soften his heart with little to no effort. He smiled softly, nodding, waiting for him to get his stuff to help him.

“Whoa, really?” he burst out, straightening his back. The pure _joy_ in his eyes made a giggle bubble up in Atsumu’s chest, “you’re so cool, ‘Tsumu! Thank you!”

“Well then,” he huffed, trying —and failing— to look annoyed, “get your stuff so we can start.”

“Yessir!”

He turned on his heels, starting to walk towards the door, but stopped mid-step. Atsumu tilted his head, looking at him with concern drawing a line in between his furrowed brows, and an “Is everything okay?” hanging from the tip of his tongue.

“Uh,” Hinata sighed, turning to him once again. He scratched at his cheek, looking ashamed of something Atsumu couldn’t understand, swaying on his tiptoes, “I uh, I can’t go get my stuff.”

“Why?”

“My stuff’s with my mom.”

“And?”

“I don’t want my mom to find me.”

“Why?”

Hinata opened his mouth to speak but closed it a few seconds later. No sound came out of in between his lips, now pressed into a thin, pale line filled with something that looked very much like sadness. Atsumu didn’t like the way his eyes lost their glimmer, and he didn’t like the way his shoulders sagged either.

“Could you explain them to me?” he mumbled, bashful. Once again, Atsumu had the feeling Hinata didn’t want to answer any more questions about the topic. “Fractions, I mean.”

Atsumu sighed, trying —and failing, _again_ — to look annoyed.

“Sit down,” he ordered, patting the spot at his right. “I’ll explain.”

Hinata _beamed_ , the huge smile back on his face again. The boy sitting on the bed discovered he liked the way his eyes wrinkled when he smiled, how they shone with a strength that didn’t really match his emaciated appearance. His wrists were impossibly thin, making the bone look like it was right about to pop out of its socket, and Atsumu was sure he could’ve counted his ribs pressing against the skin of his abdomen.

He made as promised, explaining fractions to him as best as he could. How to summate, how to subtract, how to multiply and divide them. Hinata nodded, asking questions now and then, and Atsumu felt that if he had a notebook, he’d be writing everything he said down so he wouldn’t forget it. He knew Hinata would forget his explanation in less than an hour, but he didn’t care; he liked being entertained and being able to brag about something in front of someone who didn’t know him. And by the admiration shining in his eyes, Atsumu was sure he had accomplished his mission.

Once there was nothing else to explain about fractions, the conversation drifted off to classmates. Hinata told him stories about them, how one time he’d hidden in the bushes to skip classes because his teacher didn’t like him and made him feel uncomfortable. His friends had found him and decided to join him, which caused the rest of the class to imitate them and hide in the bushes outside the classroom. It didn’t really work, but the rest of the teachers kind of discovered the teacher made students feel ashamed of not being able to do some things he’d taught them.

He also told him about his mom, the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. Brown hair and eyes, white skin, and the softest voice. Warm hands that caressed his cheeks with the utmost care and that could cook the best food for him because she knew exactly what he liked.

“If you like your mom so much,” Atsumu started, confused, “why don’t you want her to find you?”

Hinata’s eyes looked sad again, and Atsumu pursed his lips. He didn’t like this boy, who he’d just met, to look sad.

“It’s a long story.”

“I’ve got time.”

As if the universe wanted to prove him wrong, someone knocked on his door. Two heads turned in the direction of the sound as if they’d gotten caught doing something bad, and when a doctor, along with a brown-haired woman, appeared behind the wood, Shouyou left out a defeated sigh.

“Doesn’t really look like it.”

“Shouyou!” the woman gasped, bursting into the room as if Atsumu hadn’t been there at all. He felt annoyed by it, but the uncomfortable feeling boiling in the pit of his stomach disappeared when he realized this woman was Hinata’s mother: the shape of their eyes was the same, and the way she seemed to bring light into his boring room was so alike he wondered how was it that he hadn’t seen it before. The expression on her face, however, looked very much like the one his mom had shown while she called the ambulance for him. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere! What were you thinking? Running off like that…!”

“Sorry, mom,” he apologized. Judging by the way his fists were gripping the hem of his pants, he didn’t feel sorry at all.

“When will you stop doing this?” his mom sighed, reaching out with her hand to cradle her fingers through his hair. “You can’t keep running away everytime you have ch— everytime your treatment is due, baby.”

“I know.”

He did know. He looked like it.

“You also disturbed this poor kid,” she kept going, fixing her gaze on Atsumu now. She looked apologetic, almost hurt, and he couldn’t help the blush that crept on his cheeks. “I’m so sorry for Shouyou’s intrusion.”

“Uhm… it’s okay, he didn’t disturb me at all,” he lied. Hinata _did_ disturb him at first, but ten minutes into their chit-chat seemed to make the annoyance disappear. If he had to make a wild guess, he’d say it’d be hard for someone to feel annoyed for too long in his presence. “Shouyou-kun is fun to hang out with.”

Hinata’s eyes got three sizes bigger with surprise, his mouth hanging open while he looked at him as if he’d grown a second head between one blink and another. The blush on his cheeks, that never seemed to fade, intensified until the small freckles that dusted the bridge of his nose and the angle of his cheekbones disappeared completely. He looked thankful, and Atsumu couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but it felt _wrong_. He wasn’t lying when he said Hinata was fun to hang out with: he _did_ have a lot of fun while talking to him. He surely knew it, right?

“Thank you, ‘Tsumu!” he chirped, standing up. The smile on his face wrinkled the skin around the corners of his eyes, and Atsumu noticed he had dimples at each side of his mouth. “It was fun hanging out with you, too!”

Atsumu smiled, nodding.

“See you around!”

“I don’t think none of us will be here tomorrow,” he laughed.

“Oh,” Hinata said, the smile fading a little. “I will be here tomorrow, though.”

* * *

Atsumu was nine years old when his physical education teacher had to call an ambulance because he’d broken his arm when he fell off of a tree. It was the second time in his life that he had to hop on an ambulance, and he discovered he didn’t like it. His teacher accompanied him the whole way, but he ignored him: the only good thing in the vehicle was sitting in the gurney, right beside him, squeezing in between the railing and his good arm.

“This thing’s uncomfortable, ‘Tsumu,” he whined, pouting.

“It’s not supposed to be comfortable, Shoucchan, it’s a hospital gurney. And an emergency one, at that.”

“Yeah, but you’re already in pain… isn’t this supposed to be… _not scary_?”

“It isn’t scary.”

“It is.”

“It’s not.”

“ _Iiiiiiis._ ”

“Who’re you talking to, Miya-kun?”

His teacher’s voice pierced through the fog of peace and comfort his imaginary friend lifted around him. Even inside the ambulance, that looked very much like a box filled with things he didn’t want to know what they were, Shoucchan seemed to carry sunlight and warmth with him. He was still small, still too thin for his liking, with hollow cheeks and slim wrists, but he never seemed to get tired like he did when he first met him, two years before. The small frame of his friend cuddled up to him while he giggled under his breath as if to mock him for having being caught red-handed.

“To myself,” he answered, after swallowing the lump that had formed in his throat. Whenever Shoucchan talked to him, he always forgot he was a part of the world around him. That he didn’t exist in a separated reality, one where only he and his friend were allowed, “I do it when I’m worried or in pain.”

“You’re a terrible liar, ‘Tsumu.”

_Shut it!_

“Oh.”

His teacher didn’t elaborate on that, and Atsumu cringed; he’d completely forgotten he wasn’t alone. It was weird already for a nine-year-old to still have an imaginary friend, and he’d gone and made it worse by letting it slip in front of one of his teachers. It was enough with Osamu making fun of him because of Shoucchan… he felt mortified.

“Your teacher doesn’t seem to like me,” Shoucchan commented, tilting his head to the right. He bit the tip of his thumb, pensive, as if he was trying to get to a conclusion that kept running away, “is it because I’m imaginary and he can’t see me?”

Atsumu looked at him with raised eyebrows, trying his best to answer without using his words.

“Ooooh, I see.”

His friend stayed in silence until they arrived at the hospital. Along their time on the road, that didn’t exceed the fifteen minutes, Atsumu kept quiet as well. To his left, Shoucchan seemed to sleep peacefully, as he always did whenever he wasn’t talking. He slept a lot, Atsumu thought… almost as if he’d always been tired.

It had been two years since he appeared. After his surgery, that first time in his hospital room, he’d imagined him even with his mom, a woman that never showed up again. He refrained from asking Shoucchan if he missed his mom; he remembered clearly that he loved her, but he didn’t want her to find him. The reasons as to why he kept running away from the woman were still a mystery to him, and although curiosity almost always had the best of him, he never asked.

He felt that was a question Shoucchan would never answer. And if he didn’t, it had to be because of an important reason.

A few minutes later, Atsumu, Shoucchan, and the teacher arrived at the emergency room. Doctors were fusing all around him, and upon being asked if his mother had been called, the teacher answered she was on her way. Atsumu frowned: he was gonna get his ass whooped for having been so careless. Probably Osamu would laugh his ass off, too.

Once again, he needed surgery. They had to rearrange the bones of his arm and put some steel stuff in them so they cured properly. He didn’t listen very closely; it was his mom, who arrived ten minutes after them, who listened attentively to every single word that came out of the doctor’s mouth. The only thing he could do in that situation was to bite his lips, trying to ignore the pain, and wonder where Shoucchan had gone after they got off of the ambulance. It felt as if he’d disappeared the moment he set a metaphorical foot on the building.

The doctor explained the procedure to him. Carefully, as if he’d been talking to a wounded animal ready to munch on his throat, he described every single step the medical team would take during his surgery. Showing him the mask connected to the anesthetic cylinder, he also explained how he would feel sleepier and sleepier the more he inhaled, and told him he wouldn’t feel a single thing after he closed his eyes.

Atsumu refrained from telling him that he knew how anesthesia worked. This wasn’t his first surgery, after all. He would probably have bragged about knowing, had the doctor not been so kind to him, soft words spoken in a cheerful tone to soothe him down.

The mask was on his face now, the cold gas tingling against his lips and his nose. Drowsiness was weighing down on him while the doctor counted from ten to zero in the periphery of his vanishing consciousness, and just when he was about to close his eyes for good, letting the anesthesia work its magic, he wondered where Shoucchan had gone.

He woke up a few hours later, groggy and sore. His right arm prickled with the unpleasant sensation of the plaster keeping his articulations and fixed bone in place, and there was a numb pain sending waves of something akin to nausea pooling in the pit of his stomach like a hook pulling downwards.

He clicked his tongue, realizing then that his mouth was bone-dry. Clearing his throat to get rid of the unpleasant dryness that seemed to choke him, Atsumu looked around his room. He could feel some sort of déjà vu, the memories of Shoucchan appearing in the corner of his hospital room too fresh on his mind to ignore it. It had been two years since his friend showed up, uninvited, but not undesired.

There was a knock on his door, causing him to startle. Looking to the heart rate detector to his right, he checked if the beeping machine had alerted a nurse that he was awake. He couldn’t really know if there was something weird with it until his eyes caught a glimpse of the ascending line that showed his surprise to the knocking.

“Come in,” he said, not really knowing what else to do.

The lock clicked when the handle turned on its axis, the door opening a little to reveal the corridor behind it, and then a small frame he almost had trouble identifying.

“’Tsumu!”

Atsumu blinked. What had happened to Shoucchan in the hours he’d been unconscious? He looked even thinner, his cheeks more hollow then he remembered. His hair was definitely shorter, even. The blush dusting the angle of his cheekbones looked a deep, dark red that didn’t feel healthy or natural at all, and the whistle of his breathing made him cringe in worry. Had he been running? He never ran… he _didn’t need to_. He could just pop-up wherever he wanted to, whenever he pleased.

“Shoucchan? What happened to you?”

His friend tilted his head, blinking in confusion.

“What do you mean?” he asked, crossing the threshold and finally stepping into the room. Closing the door behind him, Shoucchan gave a few hesitant steps forward, staring at him like he hadn’t seen him in years.

“Your hair…” Atsumu started, stopping mid-track to press his lips into a line. He shouldn’t be worrying about those things; there were more pressing matters to be discussed. Like his location for the past few hours, for example. “Nevermind that. Where’ve you been?”

“Oh, I was hanging out with my mom,” he answered, smiling from ear to ear. His irises were as bright as ever, but there was something different in the way his dimples looked and the way the wrinkles around his eyes seemed to sink into his skin. There were a lot of details that Atsumu couldn’t quite identify as if the anesthesia had given him time to evolve while he was away. “She’s friends with one of the nurses and has been asking everyday for you since you left! Isn’t she the greatest?”

“What—”

“Oh, remember that you explained fractions to me? I got a perfect score on my homework! Thank you so much!”

“Wait, Shoucchan—”

“My mom was like, super-duper mad at me for running off when my treatment was due, but she was also super-duper happy to hear that I got a perfect score!” he kept on, pumping his fist in the air. He coughed, the hand that had been up in the air a few moments ago clawing at his chest now. “Geez, I shouldn’t do that…”

Atsumu was out of the bed before he knew it, pulling at the needle attached to the back of his hand until it was out, pulling at the electrodes that connected him to the heart rate detector until the constant beeping turned into a flat-lined beep in the monitor. Ignoring the wave of nausea that washed over him with the sudden motion and the bleeding spot left by the needle, he crossed the distance between them with a few long strides, placing his good hand on Shoucchan’s back and using the one in the cast to hold him by the shoulder as best as he could.

“Shoucchan? Are you okay?” he demanded, sounding frantic and desperate. There was a broken edge to his voice that made him feel like he was in a nightmare, like it didn’t matter how much he screamed, no one would hear him. “Hey, do you wanna sit down?”

“Yeah, I’m ok,” the boy answered, his voice weak and hoarse. There were tears in his eyes and the blush on his cheeks seemed to have deepened with his outburst. “I’m fine, this is normal.”

“This had never happened before,” Atsumu growled.

“What? ‘Tsumu, this happens to me all the time,” Shoucchan said, looking at him in confusion.

Atsumu refrained from following the instinct that went off in his head, like a siren screaming right beside his ear, telling him to get away from him. This short-haired Shoucchan, with his thinner frame, with his redder blush, with the dimples that seemed too big on his face, and the eyes that seemed as bright as before but clouded with tears, felt like a stranger. He didn’t feel like his friend, the one that made Osamu frown because he couldn’t see him, because he was used to sharing everything with Atsumu.

This person, right in front of him, wasn’t _his_.

“You…”

“’Tsumu?”

“Who are you?”

The boy that looked like his Shoucchan blinked again, tilting his head to the right as if he couldn’t follow the conversation. Atsumu could almost see the gears of his brain turning, trying to get rid of the rust that seemed to keep them locked in their place. They whined and complained while the fake Shoucchan tried to wrap his head around the events unfolding in front of him, a puzzled look invading his features like soldiers marching to war.

“You called me Shoucchan,” he said, carefully, slowly, as if he tried to not startle Atsumu. “You know exactly who I am, ‘Tsumu.”

“No.”

“What?”

“I don’t know who you are,” he mumbled, finally giving in to the instinct of getting away from him. He took two steps backward, swallowing the new wave of nausea that crashed against him. His vision was suddenly blurred, and he didn’t know if those were tears or if he’d demanded too much effort from a body that was still getting rid of the anesthesia. “You’re not _my_ Shoucchan.”

“I— I’m not _what_?”

“Get out of my room.”

“What’s going on?”

“You’re a stranger! That’s what’s going on!”

“But I met you here, in the same hospital, two years ago!”

His voice cracked in the middle of his sentence, throwing him into a new coughing outburst that shook his shoulders and made his already small frame look even smaller. His face was pale against the furious red of his blushed cheeks and it looked even paler against his short, orange hair that gave a too vibrant feeling to belong to a body as weak as the one it was attached to. Atsumu had the burning need of holding him again, to give him the support he needed so his knees wouldn’t buckle under his weight, but the fear pooling in his gut held him in place, glued to the tiles underneath his bare feet.

“You…” the boy started, rubbing at his mouth with his arm. The tears in his eyes were spilling now, running down his red cheeks and tapping against the yellow shirt that seemed too big for his body, “you looked so kind two years ago.”

A nurse burst into the room then, looking frantic, and both boys startled, turning to her with a guilty expression.

“Hinata-kun,” the woman said, sighing in relief for something Atsumu couldn’t understand, “I didn’t know you were here.”

“I’m already leaving,” he mumbled, drying the tears on his eyes with the back of his hand. The skin looked puffed and swollen around his eyes, and there were new tears pooling in the corner of his eyelids. “Do you know where my mom is?”

“Ah, Hinata-san is in the reception. She said you could wait in the cafeteria.”

“Thank you, Kamegawa-san.”

Sniffling and rubbing at his nose with anger, the boy walked to the door and slammed it shut behind his back, making Atsumu jump on his spot.

The nurse fixed her eyes on the door, blinking in confusion before turning her gaze to Atsumu.

“Now, Miya-kun,” she started, looking suddenly _very_ angry, “care to explain what are you doing out of bed? You are supposed to be resting after your surgery.”

* * *

Shoucchan didn’t come back after that. Although Atsumu waited, waited a little bit more, _and kept waiting_ , he didn’t return. It felt as if he’d vanished from the face of Earth, as if his entire existence had been whipped out of the universe. Throughout the years, the memories of him started to vanish as well; once Atsumu turned twelve, the only thing that remained of the orange-haired boy were a few fragments of images blurry on the corners, a numb feeling of nostalgia, some betrayal, and a special avoidance for sunsets.

Neither Osamu nor the rest of his family made any sort of comment on the topic. Once they realized Shoucchan, the boy they’d heard him talking to so many times was gone, they avoided the memory of his existence like the plague. Whether it was to help him get over it or because they felt relieved that he’d finally “grown out of imaginary friends”, Atsumu didn’t know. The thing was that he never talked about Shoucchan ever again, and his life went on as it was supposed to in the first place.

With twenty years, Atsumu lived now with his twin in the same apartment. Their mother and family had stayed back in Kansai, along with all the childhood memories they so deeply cherished, and along with those Atsumu fought so hard to erase from his mind. He’d been living in Tokyo for three years already, and the frantic life-style of the capital seemed to have made it easier for him to forget the fragments of the boy he’d held so close to his heart.

The new academic year started with him sleeping in for the entrance ceremony, the same way it’d happened the two years prior. At this point, he’d gotten over the shame he’d felt the first time, and the only thing left was a slight annoyance for having lost the opportunity of checking out the freshmen of his major. If things went well and his teacher decided to let him be his assistant again, he’d probably have to interact with them _a lot more_ than he’d really like. But money was money, didn’t matter where it came from, and he still needed to pay for his bad habit of buying whatever clothes he found appealed to his tastes.

Groaning, he kicked off the sheets and extended his arms, fixing his gaze on the ceiling of his room with a frown deep with annoyance. He’d slept through his six alarms and somehow, _somehow_ , had the hunch Osamu hadn’t even tried to wake him up before heading off for the campus.

That damn bastard.

Grumbling underneath his breath, Atsumu hopped off the bed and padded to the bathroom. He had the pressing need of going back to his cocoon of covers and sleep for the rest of the day, but he knew that if he gave in to the idea, he’d probably give in too many times during the semester. And truth be told, he knew himself enough to know that was a dangerous line to dance on; falling into the temptation of being irresponsible always granted a harsh fall into reality.

The shower managed to wake him up a little bit and by the time he was fully dressed and ready to head off, the only thing he needed to be completely awake was a cup of coffee. His apartment complex was five short minutes away from the campus, and there were a lot of cafés and coffee shops that could serve the purpose of injecting caffeine directly into his bloodstream. He yearned for an espresso that’d finally give him the energy to behave like an actual human being.

Munching on a cereal bar to calm his rumbling stomach down, Atsumu slung his backpack over his shoulder, grabbed the keys, and closed the door shut before locking it. He was absolutely ready to bump into the woman that lived in the apartment right next to his, rehearsing the saccharine-coated words he’d dedicate her so she’d left him alone, feeling the annoyance falling dense and heavy on his shoulders… only to find the apartment door wide open and a few boxed piled up in front of it.

So they got a new neighbor, huh? That was cool. More than cool, actually, if it meant the stalker had finally moved out. Ever since she had laid eyes on him, it had been _quite_ hard to get rid of her constant inappropriate questions, her constant _flirting,_ and the unpleasant feeling of his bounds being overstepped. Even if the new neighbor was a sixty-year-old grumpy man, he’d surely feel safer now.

With his spirits notoriously lifted, Atsumu finally left his apartment complex behind his back. Humming a song, whose lyrics he’d long forgotten, he made his way down the sidewalk, stopping in a coffee shop to get his espresso and a muffin to keep his stomach at peace until lunch.

Then he saw it.

A mop of bright, orange hair.

_Ya gotta be fuckin’ kiddin’ me._

He stopped dead in his tracks, tense fingers gripping the banknotes halfway into giving them to the barista that looked at him as if he’d grown a second head in the blink of an eye. The giggling that followed the chiming of the bell over the door sent a shiver of raw fear down his spine; he could feel his blood running cold, the color of his face vanishing like an oil painting being rubbed with turpentine, the canvas underneath showing little by little with each scrub.

“Sir?”

He choked on his own saliva before averting his gaze from the mop of orange hair and fixing it on the barista, whose eyes were filled by a sudden worry that made his insides churn.

“Yah?” he managed to say, coughing.

“Are you okay?”

“No idea.”

After paying for the espresso and the blueberry muffin that didn’t seem so appealing now, Atsumu shoved the brown paper bag into his backpack and rushed out of the coffee shop with a knot pressing the insides of his neck. He choked on his own breath while he scanned the crowd around him, searching for the distinctive flash of orange he’d almost forgotten throughout the years. The hue, the fluffiness, the curls— everything seemed to be _the same_ and he couldn’t begin to process the idea of him coming back after more than a decade.

He made himself inhale and exhale, pushing the air out of his lungs with the dedication someone with an anxiety attack would need to calm down. It was impossible. It had to be a mistake— _of course_ it was a mistake. _He_ had been a product of his imagination, a projection of his pressing need for individuality and uniqueness in a life where he shared everything with his brother, even his face. _He_ hadn’t been more than an afterthought caused by the subsiding anesthesia creeping off of his body after surgery. _He_ didn’t exist.

It was impossible for Atsumu to find _him_ because he wasn’t real. He never was. It was a product of his eight-year-old self’s imagination, something to feel a void he didn’t know it existed until he popped up in the corner of his hospital room.

Atsumu gritted his teeth. Shoucchan wasn’t real. He never was. He would never be. Shoucchan wasn’t real. He never was. He would never—

He took a swig of his espresso, swallowing without paying any mind to the scalding hot liquid burning on his taste buds and throat. The pain that extended through his neck, red and glowing, felt like an anchor to reality; that one where he was absolutely sane, where his imaginary friend from childhood hadn’t shown up in a coffee shop in Tokyo. That one where he had discovered how much he missed him when he thought he’d recognized him.

It must’ve been someone with dyed hair. It was the only logical explanation.

Atsumu gritted his teeth a little bit more. What a fucking way to start his first day.

His classes dragged on like molasses, each tic-tac of the clock like a slap right on his face. When lunchtime arrived, he felt tired and grumpy, something his brother would absolutely not let him live down. While he pushed his food around his plate with the spoon, Osamu’s eyes fixed on him, raised eyebrows and a smirk pulling at the corner of his mouth.

“So,” he started, clearing his throat to catch his attention. Atsumu raised his eyes from the cooling meal, letting out a grumble to let him know he was listening, “ya’ve been strangely, and dare I say, _terrifyingly_ quiet. What’s up? Ya woke up on the wrong side of the bed or somethin’?”

Atsumu huffed out a humorless laugh and pursed his lips. He _needed_ to talk to someone about what had happened that morning, but he didn’t know if Osamu was the right person. Sure, he was his twin and there was little to nothing he didn’t know about him, but he didn’t feel safe enough to go and tell him that he _suspected_ he’d seen his childhood friend in a coffee shop. Osamu would probably think he was finally losing it.

For a second, he wondered if he needed a therapist. Would it be too expensive to get therapy? God, he hoped not.

“Yah, I woke up on the wrong side of the bed.”

“Bullshit.”

“I had a bad mornin’ ‘kay? ’S all.”

“What, didja mess up yer hair-style again?” Osamu joked, laughing quietly to himself. The laughter died on his lips when he turned his gaze to Atsumu and realized he wasn’t laughing along. “Boy, ‘s it really that serious? What in the actual hell happened to getcha all grumpy like that?”

Atsumu pondered his options. Chewing that uneasiness until it went away with time, while having to bear with all the anxiety that came with it, and all the crappy scenarios his brain would surely make up to make him feel guilty _god knew why_ , or spew it all out and get rid of it as soon as possible. The downside to _that_ was the part where Osamu thought he’d finally gone crazy. Still better than losing sleep because of a hyperactive brain with too many issues to deal with, right?

“Remember when I was seven and I had appendicitis?”

Osamu frowned, the piece of tuna held by his chopsticks falling right back onto his bowl of rice when he stopped midway of getting the food into his mouth. The caution in his eyes wasn’t unknown by Atsumu, who’d seen it way too many times to feel annoyed by it anymore. It felt as if Osamu expected him to say something so stupidly wrong he’d want to run for the hills or, less probably, say something so unexpectedly smart he’d have to pretend he didn’t hear it. Simply put, his twin looked at him like only a sibling would.

“Please tell me ya don’t have ghost pain on that thing or ‘m seriously slappin’ ya.”

“What _the fuck_ is ghost pain.”

“Ya have two brain cells left or what?”

“Ya bastard—” he started, scowling. Exhaling the breath he didn’t know he was holding, Atsumu tried to pull himself together and try again. “No, I ain’t got nothin’ like… _ghost pain_ on my nonexistent appendix, ya asshole.”

“I sure hope so, ‘cuz that shit doesn’t exist,” his twin huffed, rolling his eyes.

“Shut yer trap!” Atsumu shrieked, holding back from throwing his spoon at Osamu’s head. “’m trynna say somethin’ here!”

“Then go ahead and say it!”

“I think I saw Shoucchan in a coffee shop!”

Silence fell over them with a consistency akin to that of hot caramel. Sticky, scalding hot and deeply unnerving, uncomfortable enough to make him writhe on his chair as if he’d suddenly felt a shiver go down his spine. Atsumu pushed the rice on his plate outward, so close to the edge he saw the exact moment when a few grains fell onto the silver-colored tray everyone got in the cafeteria of the university.

Osamu picked up his piece of tuna again, munching on it without saying anything. It looked like he was still trying to process Atsumu’s words, going over the sentence, dissecting it, tearing every syllable apart until everything that was left was the meaning under the words.

“Shoucchan,” he started, saying his name as if the word had been foreign. “Shoucchan as in yer imaginary friend?”

“Yah.”

“The one that showed up after yer surgery?”

“Yah.”

“Have ya considered goin’ to therapy?”

“Why do I even fuckin’ bother,” Atsumu sighed, dropping his spoon on the plate. He pushed the tray away with one finger, looking at it as if it’d offended him deeply.

“’Tsumu,” Osamu breathed out, placing his chopsticks delicately on top of his bowl, “that kid went away when ya were nine. What d’ja mean ya think ya saw him?”

“I mean exactly that,” he said, gritting his teeth. “I was buyin’ my coffee this mornin’ and I swear I saw him leavin’. I _heard_ him laughin’.”

“Is it possible he’d been someone who looked like him?”

“That’s what I think,” he sighed, rubbing his hands against his face in frustration. The whole situation put him on edge; it brought back memories he thought he’d buried six feet down along with his idea that ghosts stole his pudding when in reality he’d ate them all the day prior. “But it’s still… botherin’ me, y’know?”

Osamu’s eyes were heavy on Atsumu. It felt as if his brother had suddenly turned into an X-Ray machine and he could see everything he kept hidden to everyone else. There was no reason to hide something from his twin, but he still felt the need to keep one or two thoughts to himself. He would’ve done the same with his idea of having seen his imaginary friend from childhood in a coffee shop hadn’t he known that’d eat him alive before finally disappearing into the depths of his mind, there were it couldn’t bother him anymore.

The crowded cafeteria didn’t seem to be the most suitable place to talk about that, either. Atsumu was thankful they’d managed to get a table for themselves because he didn’t feel comfortable with the idea of someone else overhearing that conversation. He had a reputation to live up to after all… he couldn’t be the sexiest guy on campus and having his juniors know he had an imaginary friend that still haunted him, right? That was absolutely anticlimactic.

“So? If ya think it was a mistake…” he began, a slight carefreeness to his voice that made Atsumu’s eye twitch. He understood, though, that his brother had no reason whatsoever to feel as uneasy as Atsumu felt; he wasn’t the one that was being _haunted_ by a ghost of the past after all. It was natural for him to not see the same things Atsumu saw in the entire situation, all of the reasons as to why he felt so on edge about the topic. “Look, I know this might be a little uncomfortable for ya…”

“ _A little?_ ” Atsumu repeated, blinking in disbelief.

“But,” his twin kept going, as if he’d never spoken at all, “ya can’t let this bother ya so much. Relax and forget ‘bout it… it’ll be over before ya even notice.”

He did have a point; the more he worried about what he thought he’d seen, the more it’d eat him alive. The best thing to do, for now, was to let it go. The same way he did when he was a kid, the only option he had left was to go with the flow and see how things unfolded. It might as well turn out to be nothing at all, and all his worries and hypothetical nights without sleeping would be in vain.

“Y’know what?” he said, pulling the tray from the edge, his fingers gripping the spoon once again. “Yer right.”

“Of course I am.”

If Osamu’s objective was to calm him down, he’d achieved his goal. When he left the cafeteria, walking through the campus to get to his next class, he felt the weight that had fallen on his shoulders a little lighter. His twin was right; whether he was having a hallucination or the person he’d seen in the coffee shop was just someone who looked alike, both situations had a solution. The first problem had to _obviously_ be solved through therapy, and the second one didn’t even need him to do something. He felt a bit silly for having worried so much about it. After the logical view Osamu had cast on the entire thing, everything seemed easier.

Yeah. He just needed to go with the flow. He felt like a seven-year-old boy, his eyes falling on the mop of orange hair on the corner of his hospital room all over again. This time, however, he didn’t need to explain fractions to a complete stranger, didn’t need to hold on to a person his drugged imagination had created. He was an adult now, and he had to live through this the way an adult would: ignoring the thing until it went away… or it eventually blew up in his face.

By the time his classes were over and his teacher announced he’d been selected as his assistant for the term, Atsumu felt worn out. The only thing he wanted was to flop down on the bed and sleep until the world ended, but he already had a pile of assignments, essays, and papers to go over and a few of those due to next week. It was at times like these when he wondered why _the hell_ he’d decided to become an attorney.

His brother was already home when he opened the door to their apartment. The warm smell of cooking rice floated through the air, attracting him like a magnet to the iron splinters, and the salty scent of sautéed vegetables made his stomach grumble in anticipation. He hadn’t realized how hungry he was until he set foot on the green-tiled floor of his home, the clattering of pans, pots, utensils, and the rhythmic sound of the sharp edge of a knife hitting the cutting-board filling the silence. Those sounds felt familiar and welcoming, and Atsumu sighed in content as he stepped out of his shoes and into the slippers.

“Aye,” he mock-saluted, stepping into the living room with a lazy smile plastered on his face. Osamu’s eyes averted from the sizzling vegetables in front of him, moving the wok without paying attention. _That wrist, though_. “Thanks for cookin’ dinner.”

Osamu nodded, his eyes falling back to the wok on the stove. He flicked his wrist, pushing it away from him, moving it with a gracious curve so the content would slide and fall back into the wok. For a moment there, Atsumu caught a glimpse of cauliflower, broccoli, and peas.

“I’ll go get a shower,” Atsumu announced, trying to not look impressed by his brother’s cooking skills. “Gimme a shout when’s ready.”

“As if.”

Atsumu snickered along the way to the bathroom, knowing damn well his brother wouldn’t let him go to bed hungry. Mostly because he’d never allow something he’d cooked to get wasted, but still.

The shower relaxed his tense muscles, warm water enveloping him, swirling down to the drain along with the shampoo foam. The steam curling up in the air fogged the shower doors and turned the bathroom into an unknown place, beads of condensation making it look like every single surface was embedded with tiny diamonds. The light flickered through the drops sliding down the tiled walls, like the sun hitting the dewdrops after the morning had just broken.

Sliding the shower door closed behind his back, with a towel hanging from his waist, Atsumu huffed out a heavy breath. The heat of the water along with the steam swirling in the air, attaching to every surface including him made him feel a bit suffocated, but he paid it no mind. It was _nice_ to finally let the day go. Things didn’t seem so problematic, so _important_ , after a shower.

Fresh, clean, and smelling like his favorite soap, Atsumu left the bathroom with a towel covering his head. Rubbing at his hair to get rid of the remaining water, he took a pick towards the kitchen, checking if Osamu had finished dinner, swallowing down the annoyed whine when he realized he was still cooking. He had no right to complain, although he would’ve done it if he hadn’t been so tired.

There was a knock on the apartment door, and Atsumu found the perfect excuse to let out the annoyed whine that seemed to creep its way up his throat, double the annoyed for having been ignored.

“I’ll go get that.”

Osamu answered something along the lines of “well, I sure hope so ‘cuz I can’t” at the same time a new knock echoed through the apartment. Huffing out a laugh, he slid the towel to his shoulders, gripping each end while walking to the door.

The handle was cold against his warm palm and the air was chilly against his skin when he finally pushed the wood to reveal the person outside. He was sure he’d find their new neighbor giving the traditional introduction tour, and he wasn’t wrong.

He was right, of course. But he also felt as if the entire world had just stopped dead in its tracks, suspended by a thread, hanging over his head while threatening to fall onto the void and shatter everything around him.

“Ah, good night! My name’s—”

“Shoucchan?”

The person in front of him looked so different he couldn’t understand why the name had gone out of his lips before he could even think about it. The person he'd just called "Shoucchan" was _taller_ than he remembered, but the bright orange mop of hair that topped his head still made him look like the sun. His eyes shone with the same strength, hypnotizing and powerful, a look that _finally_ fit his overall appearance.

There where Atsumu remembered hollow cheeks and a furious blush that never went away, he found the healthy roundness of a body that didn’t look decimated by something he never found out. The blush was absent and what was left behind was the glow of a well-cared-for skin. He didn’t look too thin either; soft muscles moved in his arms, tensed the shirt stretching over his chest and shoulders, and the wheezing of his breath existed no more.

“What?”

 _Oh_.

“Ah,” Atsumu sighed, rubbing his hand against his face. Shoucchan wasn’t real; he thought he’d come to terms with that during the afternoon, standing in the middle of a crowded sidewalk. He’d thought all those ideas, thoughts, and guesses had gone down the drain with the water, the soap, and the shampoo. Yet there he was, still holding on to an assumption that had no reason to be, and definitely no possibility to even be remotely real. “Sorry, ’m… ya just look like someone I used to… nevermind that. Were ya sayin’?”

“’Tsumu?”

**Author's Note:**

> Aaaaaand that's it! I hope you guys liked it uwu
> 
> Like I said before, I'll probably write more of this, but I'm not sure. And it will not be soon. I still haven't finished the AtsuHina Week, and I also need to focus on college, so you might need to wait until my holidays to see a new work for this AU. And maybe, just _maybe_ , my writing skills will be better when my winter holidays arrive.
> 
> That's it from me! See y'all in June!


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